


nothing more & nothing different

by corellians_only



Category: Triple Frontier (2019)
Genre: F/F, M/M, gender neutral reader, soft soft soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-19 01:00:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29991480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corellians_only/pseuds/corellians_only
Summary: frankie wonders how to express his love for you
Relationships: Francisco "Catfish" Morales & Reader, Francisco "Catfish" Morales/Reader
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	nothing more & nothing different

frankie wakes you in callused skims of fingers against skin that match his toughness in its own sort of softness. not perfect: no, there are scars and bumps and bruises and all sorts of things that make you curl into yourself from time to time. but it’s soft in its openness towards him, everything that is not yourself falling away. resting on your side of the bed, your face is turned toward the window, toward the gauzy light that attempts to swerve through half-closed curtains.

when you’re like this, he can admire the length of your neck, the gentle slope of your collarbones down to your chest, and even further down, eyes gliding ever more deeper the expanse of skin to your lungs. the expansion and collapse of a practiced organ beneath layers of skin and fat and muscle is maybe a little more tense than usual.

frankie supposes that’s to be expected. thoughts (rowdy and insouciant) creep their way into your mind like professional hit-men, keeping a twenty-four alert on you for days in order to attack your weakest points.

the brain is smart like that. too smart, he’s often thought, thinking of battle commanders who out-thought their own selves, lost in circles of what ifs and strategy. he thinks of himself, too, for the briefest of moments. it feels icky and icy, too slippery to reach out and grasp fully so he returns his gaze — his focus — to you.

with steady hands (always sure, always sturdy) he reaches out and touches you. touch is something he understands; it’s the language that doesn’t require him to interpret the subtext of finicky spaces between words. touch, frankie thinks, is merely how language stores itself in the body — where it goes when words are not big enough to encapsulate the totality of your living, breathing, self.

prime caresses — first, principal, origin — occur on your face. fingertips drag along your upturned cheekbone, falling down with effervescent grace to rest adjacent to your mouth. they linger there for a strange passage of time.

he’s not always sure how to keep track these days. is it the number of nights he can sleep through to a sprinkling of metallic dawn? is it the number of days since he left the treatment center and clung to your waist so much your feet lifted from mortal ground? is it the instances in which he alternates between the laptop and his pilot’s headset? is it the number of kisses you breathe into his soul during all hours, not just the waking ones?

(that, he knows, is outside of time: not just infinite but eternal. you are always intertwined with him in some un-hitherto explored path).

you stir beneath his unquailing touch. dauntless even in caress, frankie’s disposition lingers long after his fingers lift away from your cheek’s apple. wrapped around you even sleep, it’s your own protective aura, a safeguard. not against all things that may hurt you (nothing, no one can do that, you both know). but it’s a lavender salve, a copse of trees, a wave cresting on the shoreline that’s large enough for you to hide in.

that’s all you need.

(him).

of all the things frankie would like (intangible and material, the ones he knows and the ones of which he’s not yet aware) resting with you remains the one which he most covets. people are silly, he thinks, when they equate rest with sleep.

but there is no time to dwell on such things; already it forces him to be a thief of some peculiar sort. stealing the two of you away from what ought to be yours by right: sensibility asks sense how one can own cyclic instances of intimacy. they are slipshod sands in the hourglass, sliding out of one place and into each other.

a flash — disconnected, turbulent — crosses behind his eyes. it’s reminiscent of fear and failure and all the other things that used to threaten his existence. but then he remembers that the hourglass will flip and he’ll get the time all over again, just in a different way.

so he’s content to bend down and kiss your cheek; frankie loses count of how many it takes for your limbs to shift more insistently and your eyes to scrunch up before peeling them open, a frown freckling in surprise.

your pouted lips are chapped from sleep and his thumb catches on them slightly as it traces them. it’s not often he gets this kind of time with you — the kind where he can relish the luxury that is the home, the life you’ve built in him and he in you.

his name falls in warms gusts of air against the callused pad, pondering the whorls of his thumbprint before dying his skin in the woven colors of your inexplicable devotion.

that’s what you had called it, once, after a disagreement. about what now, he couldn’t say; it’s long since been resolved. but you had come up behind him as he was in the garage, fiddling with something to calm his mind in the aftermath, and wrapped your arms around his thick waist and kissed the back of his neck.

“you’re a stubborn man, frankie morales,” you’d begun thoughtfully, the words falling thick and even. “stubborn as hell and just when i think i’ve gotten you figured out, you surprise me.” your cheek had settled against the rough fabric of his denim shirt and he felt the fixedness of your breath as you exhaled. “but i think that’s why i love you so much. i can’t explain you, but i don’t need to.”

he’s lost in thought, you think fondly, looking up at lightly furrowed brow as he continues to trace absentminded patterns on your skin. “what’s that you’re thinking about baby?” you ask, gently clasping his wrist and turning your head for a kiss.

“just you.” cheeks spread in a smile and frankie’s brown eyes warm as they take in your shy, reciprocal smile (still shy, still craving his gentle words all these moments later).

“i’ve got a surprise for you, lovebug,” frankie informs you. “your favorite kind, i promise.” rising from his position beside you, he chuckles at your bemused expression. “put on some comfy clothes, baby.”

-

his eyes stutter when you wander into the kitchen, where he’s busy filling a thermos with something warm.

dressed in leggings, his white long-sleeved pocket tee and his favorite (your favorite) flannel, skin glowing from your mid-afternoon rest, the ease of your movements strikes him as utterly radiant.

the restriction in your chest has ceased; he can tell by the way lean into him, full and sprightly, your head resting on his sturdy shoulder.

“stealing my clothes again?” he murmurs from the corner of his mouth. as if he needed to ask: the answer is quite literally brushing against him. but it’s not so much the answer as the process of inquiry, one frankie never tires of when it comes to you.

your giggle’s green and downy and he relishes it as he screws on the lid in rapid movements. “what’s mine is yours,” you tease and frankie can hear the smile in the mellow timbre of your voice, in how you draw out the cliché phrase in a whispering drawl.

he concedes with a kiss to your cheek. the stubble itches slightly but you like it. you know it’s frankie, then. your frankie. not the one so many people and places and things have tried to take away from you. (he, you know, has confessed the same things about you, about how he was worried you would slip away from him without even trying, without either one of you realizing).

frankie’s always been on the move, restless and anxious after long periods of time spent in any one place, with any one job.

but with you, staying in place is different.

it’s not volatile or an uneasy scrape along his spine when he tries to sleep at night. it’s moments like this, of stillness in movement, of tranquility cutting through the hazy press of lists & other ramrod truths against his mind.

he thinks about the way he’s always wanted tell you how it feels to love you, with the windows down on the winding road and later, sitting on the hood of the car drinking something warm as the sun sets of the wavering sea, and even later, holding you fast against silken sheets, so tightly not even this could fall from a wearied grasp.

he could just say that.

but he thinks he’d rather show you instead.

“c’mon baby,” he says, tucking the thermos into his elbow and engulfing your hand in his. “we’re going on a drive.”

_fin_

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! i can be found over on tumblr @filthybookworm if you ever want to say hi :)


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